Palestine's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Varsen Aghabekian speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters. AP
"It's very good to rebuild Gaza as a riviera -- but with its people in it," said Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian.
Trump's proposal for Gaza involves the United States taking over the occupied Palestinian territory, "owning it", resettling its Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere and transforming the war-ravaged strip into a riviera for "world people".
Aghabekian said displacing the Palestinians elsewhere was "unacceptable, by all means".
"Let it become a riviera," she said, "but for its people, who have been suffering for such a long time and deserve that their place becomes a riviera rather than a besieged place that smells of death."
Aghabekian was speaking to the United Nations Correspondents' Association ACANU during a visit to Geneva to address the UN Human Rights Council.
She said it would be a "natural development" for her Palestinian Authority to run the territory instead of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in the future.
"Palestinian national interests should supersede any other factional interests," she said.
"The running of Gaza would be through the legitimate authority of the state of Palestine and its arm the government. That's how we see it for the future of Gaza."
'Gaza-isation' of West Bank
Hamas called on Friday for international pressure on Israel to enter the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire that has largely halted the Israeli war on Gaza, as negotiations were resuming in Cairo.
The fragile ceasefire, which came into effect on January 19, "has to be maintained at any cost", said Aghabekian.
The ceasefire has seen the release of Israelis held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Hundreds of Palestinians, some kept in Israeli jails for years, have been freed in the West Bank under the ceasefire.
"These people need a lot of rehabilitation. They need to integrate into a society that is already struggling and suffering, so there are a lot of issues of concern," Aghabekian said.
Israel's occupation army began a major raid in the West Bank over a month ago, in the longest continuous assault on the occupied territory in two decades.
"The situation on the West Bank is extremely volatile," Aghabekian said.
"What we are being threatened with is the Gaza-isation of the West Bank, which means that people are afraid that the model that has been exercised on the Gaza Strip -- the genocidal, atrocious, brutal attacks -- are transferred to the West Bank."
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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